While it’s true that many of the popular facebook pages are for the usual celebrities, some are clearly not (a.k.a. “I <heart> sleep”). Clearly some people have created fan pages and through some means of manifestment they’ve managed to get millions of people to become fans of their pages.
Facebook is an interesting because of the zillions of people who occupy themselves with that site. It’s plausible one could bring about more positive social change through having a larger audience, and there’s no audience pool larger than Facebook.
The process is pretty straightforward but I found it difficult to find out how to do this.
Click on the popular facebook pages and you see a “Create Page” button at the top. Of course you have to have a Facebook account, and be logged in. Click on this button.
There are three sorts of fan pages: a) local businesses, b) brands / products / organizations, c) artists / public figures
Obviously the Facebook users have taken those categories as a loose definition. You can to. Do your best with the strange categories they allow you to use.
At the bottom is another “Create Page” button. Click that.
Congratulations, you now have a page. There is some customization that are required.
A picture for the upper-left-corner is a good idea. Click on the question mark they provide, and it takes you through a dialog box which allows you to upload a picture. Choose well, this is going to be your branding.
Click on ‘edit page’ just below the picture you just uploaded. You have a plethora of settings: Settings, Wall Settings, Mobile, Discussion Boards, Events, Links, Notes, Photos, Video, and More Applications. The settings are pretty straightforward so I’m only going to discuss the parts that aren’t so obvious.
A proper “Fan Page” is likely visible to the whole world. Such as, to search engines, or those few who aren’t facebook members. This is covered in “Wall Settings” which covers how visible the “wall” is.
The “mobile” section is a way to email pictures or status updates for autoposting. I suppose you could take an iphone picture and email it to facebook, but I don’t have an iphone and don’t know about this.
By default the fan page has a discussion board. Maybe you want one on the fan page, or maybe you don’t. If you don’t then click on ‘Remove Application’ and poof no more discussion board.
The “Applications” section at the bottom lets you add applications to your facebook page. I’m still unsure on what that precisely means but they do add capabilities to facebook pages. For example the discussion board is obviously an “application”. There are a zillion facebook applications available. These are a topic for other postings.